This invention generally relates to planning systems for manufacturing plants. More specifically, the invention relates to intermediate term and shorter term planning, referred to as campaign planning and detailed planning respectively, for manufacturing plants.
The Campaign Planning application defines the medium term production plan, normally for three time periods (months), within the Business Planning horizon, where the main objective is to minimize the cost of equipment setup while creating a high level schedule (campaign plan) of the complete product mix sought by the Business Planning application in a cost effective manner.
The Detailed Planning application defines the short term production plan within the campaign planning horizon based on actual customer orders where the main objective is to utilize the production capacity within the campaign plans for timely delivery of products to the customers. It interacts with other systems to ensure that customer orders are accepted only when they can be produced and delivered on time.
An object of this invention is to provide an improved campaign plan for manufacturing plants. Another object of the present invention is to provide a campaign planning system to optimally allocate equipment capacity to expected orders in a multiple production line manufacturing plant.
A further object of this invention is to provide a detailed planning system to dynamically allocate orders to previously reserved production capacity for a manufacturing plant.
These and other objectives of the invention are attained with the methods and systems disclosed herein. In accordance with a first aspect of the invention, a method and system are provided for generating a production sequence for the resources of a manufacturing plant. This method comprises the steps of identifying the total amount of each product that the plant has to produce in one period of time, identifying the operation route and productivity for each product on each available resource, and identifying setup constraints. The method includes the further steps of identifying delivery dates already committed, and identifying the minimum and maximum stock levels for each resource. The identified factors are then used to generate a production sequence for each resource of the plant with a granularity of a defined time period.
In accordance with a second aspect of this invention, a method and system are provided for planning operations of a manufacturing plant. The method comprises the steps of identifying equipment that can perform a given step of an order route comprised of a sequence of steps, and evaluating the production time of the given step. A backward search is then executed, starting at the last step of the route, to identify the first available time spot long enough to accommodate the given step. Preferably, the evaluating step includes the steps of identifying the productivity and weight of the order, and evaluating the production time on the basis of the productivity and weight of the order. Also, preferably the method includes the further step of checking through inventory to determine if there is available material to perform the given step.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description, given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the invention.